The fleeting nature of each moment gives life a poignancy that is both ephemeral and grounded in our experience, measured against the divisions of our days and the limitations of our mortality and timelessness. The present is the only place where art can be made.My work is non-objective, a record of the passage of time and the accompanying change of light. Having grown up on the plains of the American West, I am influenced by the sectioned landscape, the plowed furrows of wheat, and the expansive relationship of earth and sky. Limiting my work to the rhythm of parallel lines and intersecting grids provides a context grounded in a meditative practice that penetrates layers of reality, losing the object and often the grid as well, resolving into an overall field of consciousness, and revealing eternity in the present moment.

The exploration of materials and process are what most directly concern me, focusing on their interaction with time and the elements. My relationship with materials is not ordered to bending them to my will, but to creating a dialogue with them as equal participants in our mutual experience. Together we explore the possibilities of a relationship of infinite possibilities.I often repeat the same action again and again in a series, never identically, but letting the repeated actions give a structure within which I can step aside and let the materials find their own voice. Each action occupies a given moment of time and is a record of that moment, for no two moments are the same.

ARTIST BIO

Madeleine Dodge was born in Oklahoma City in 1947. She received her degree in fine Arts from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1968. After living and working in New York City from 1970 to1973, she has since made Denver her base where she has continually practiced her art as a painter. She has shown extensively throughout the region, the United States and Europe. Her work is part of collections, both private and corporate here and abroad.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Solo Exhibitions:

2018 Dairy Arts Center, Selections from “Rust”
2017 Spark Gallery, “Burial Practices,” Denver, CO
2017 Silverthorne Performing Art Center, Selections from “Rust” 2016 Spark Gallery, “Rust,” Denver, CO
2014-15 Goddard Center for the Arts
-2014 Spark Gallery, “Recent Work, Natural,” Denver, CO -2013 Spark Gallery, “Broken Symmetry,” Denver, CO
-2011 Spark Gallery, “Muse a Trois,” Denver, CO
-2010 Spark Gallery, “The Twenti-eighth Lark,” Denver, CO -2009 O’Sullivan Art Gallery, Regis University, Denver, CO

-2008 Spark Gallery, “Some Assembly Required,” Denver, CO -2006 Spark Gallery, “Recent Works,” Denver, CO
-2002 Spark Gallery, “Sequel to the Promised Land,” Denver, CO -2001 Spark Gallery, Denver, CO

-2001 Museum of Contemporary Art, Solo Show, Ft. Collins, CO -2000 Spark Gallery, Denver, CO

Selected Group Exhibitions:

-2017 Space Gallery, “Vantage point,” Denver, CO
-2014 Republic Plaza, “Color,” Denver, CO
-2014 Spark Gallery, “Sidekicks,” Denver, CO
-2014-15 Republic Plaza “Artists at Play,” Denver, CO
-2011 Band of Artistis, Republic Plaza Gallery, Denver, CO
-2008 Colorado Masters Show, Sandy Carson Gallery, Denver, CO -2007 Character Sketches, Loveland Museum Gallery, Loveland, CO -2007 Art: It’s All Relative, Republic Plaza, Denver CO

-2007 25thAnniversary Exhibition of the Grant Street ArtCenter, EdgeGallery, Denver, CO -2004 Character Sketches, Fresh Art Gallery, Denver, CO
-2004 An Open Book Art Exhibition, Cuyahoga College, Cleveland OH
-2003 Florence Biennial: representing USA in Florence, Italy

-2003 Maternal LegendsThe Dairy Art Center, Boulder, CO
-2003 Fra Angelico Awards Juried Invitational, Denver, CO
-2003 Momentum, Fresh Art Gallery Denver, CO
-2002 Steel City, Sangre de Christo Center for the Arts, Pueblo CO -2001 Fra Angelico Awards Juried Invitational, Denver, CO

-2001 Oz Architecture: Group Invitational Denver, CO
-2001 Colorado Open, Golden, CO, Foothills Art Center
-2001 Women’s Caucus for the Arts, Edge Gallery, Denver, CO

-2000 10thAnniversary Show, Redshift Gallery, Denver, CO
-2000 Core New Art Space: Sculpture Show Denver, CO
-2000 Corporate 2000: Juried Exhibition, Republic Plaza, Denver, CO

AWARDS

-2001 Fra Anglica Foundation “Woman Artist of the Year”2002

-2003 Colorado Business Committee for the Arts Annual Commission Award

-2004 Florence Biennial

-2004 Expressions of the Spiritual, Iliff School of Theology, Best of Painting and Best of Show

-2004 Second Place at Cuyahoga College “An Open Book”

-2005 Lorenzo II Magnifico Award: Fifth Degree in Painting, Florence, Italy

REVIEWS

-2013 Westword1993
-2009 Westword
-Nov. 2005 Denver Post
-1993-2008 Rocky Mountain News: Various Reviews -Dec. 1994 ICON Magazine: Review of “Promised Land” -Dec. 1998 Denver Post

“There is absolutely nothing like being outdoors, painting the beauty of Nature! My goal is to push through every last area of fear, and paint with utter abandon – BEAUTY. If I could be a “Vivaldi of paint”, I would feel that I have reached my ultimate goal!”

Michelle Chrisman spent years in New York City working in advertising and illustration, and moonlighting at the New York Art Students League. At the same time she studied drawing and painting, hoping for the day when she would be a full time painter. “I have always been electrified by the look and smell of oil paint.”

In the early 90s, Michelle took a week-long workshop with Ray Vinella in Taos, that changed the course of her life. I took seriously Ray’s parting words to me to ˜keep painting, and I have done just that.

Some years ago she was able to move to Taos to paint the beauty of the place. I have not found anywhere in the world like Taos. I could literally set up my easel anywhere and paint. While not a traditional plein air painter, Michelle firmly believes in applying the principals of the visual world when she paints, although she is most excited by the abstract in the natural world.
I hope to bring a new vitality to the traditional approach to plein air painting, a modern response, while honoring the rules so to speak. I am more interested in how a place makes me feel than reproducing exactly how it looks.

Michelle’s father was a sculptor in Santa Fe who relayed to her his passion about the texture and feel of art. Maybe that is why paint quality is also important to me. I cannot imagine doing a painting where the paint itself is not given a chance to express itself. Paint is an amazingly exciting organic sensuous substance that for me is almost more important than the image it is striving to represent.

Michelle is a Signature Member of Plein Air Painters of New Mexico and has attended the Plein Air Invitational in Zion National Park, Utah. She teaches plein air painting annually for Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque and Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, and summer workshops in Taos.

Representation:  The Signature Gallery Santa Fe

https://www.thesignaturegallery.com/artists/michelle-chrisman/

https://michellechrisman.com/about